instiuments either sufficiently cheap, or sufficient«»
ly expert. They are both unwilling for, and unequal
to the task of bestowing the attention necessary
to the minute details of a laborious business.
Under their management the inferior agents of the
revenue commit depredations on the trader, the revenue
suffers defalcation, and nothing is gained.
The employment of the Chinese farmers, therefore,
as long as the impolitic principle of interdicting
European colonization is persisted in, is far less
injurious both to the subject and the state. The
native trader, who would hesitate to complain of the
injustice of an European agent, will not fail to complain
of that of a Chinese one, who possesses no political
power, and is an object of jealousy, but not of
feai, both to the trader and the man in power.
On this subject I speak distinctly from the results
of my own personal experience in the control of
two of the most considerable commercial establishments
in the Archipelago, those of Samarang, and
Surabaya, in Java. Until, in the progress of colo*
nization, an active race of Europeans, by constitution
fit to bear the climate, and by education and
experience equal to transact business with the various
inhabitants of these countries, be available,
the assumption of the direct management of those
branches of the public revenue, to which I have alluded,
by the servants of the European government,
will prove injurious both to the sovereign and the
subject. • ' ,
11